Is the word "various" always followed by plural?

Various vegetation(s) in surrounding areas of cave XXX yield(s) various species.

Various vegetation(s) provide(s) food resources for various species in forest XYX.

Is the word various always followed by a plural noun?

Solution 1:

No. If you have a mass noun after various, you can use the singular. Of course, it has to be the right kind of mass noun; various water or various sand doesn't make much sense.

But searching the internet, you can find

various apparatus,
various cannon,
various fruit,

where cannon, apparatus, fruit are (at least sometimes) mass nouns.

While vegetation appears to be the right type of mass noun to follow various, I can only find very few examples of this phrase on the internet. But I wouldn't say various vegetations, which sounds much worse to me; I would say various kinds (or types) of vegetation.